Thoughts on Postmodernism

I noticed that ChristianityToday.com has a feature story on the Emergent church movement, which is much of what UBHope advocates as the wave of the future. (UBHope is the organization (of sorts) that opposes the UB church joining the Missionary Church.) The article is titled: “The Emergent Mystique” and has this subtitle: “The ’emerging church’ movement has generated a lot of excitement but only a handful of congregations. Is it the wave of the future or a passing fancy?”

Ironically, UBHope has criticized the denominational leadership for what they describe as “chasing fads.” Specifically, they’ve distributed this nonsense throughout the church: “Over the past generation the UBs have chased one trend, fad, or program after another, hoping that someone else’s inventions could solve our problems for us. This year’s fad is the Missionary Church. Five, ten, or fifteen years from now will we chase another fad?”

I have nothing against the Emergent Church movement. I just don’t think we should reorganize how we do things as a denomination just to reach a particular generation (because the next generation will be different yet).

I remember in the 1980s, when everyone was writing about the baby boomers. But we didn’t propose a radical restructuring of the denomination to better reach boomers. Nor did we do that for the Baby Busters and Gen-X crowd. But UBHope thinks we should do that for the “postmodern” generation. To me, its a form of fad-chasing. And the Christianity Today article kinda agrees. It challenges some assumptions of the postmoderns, and makes these statements:

“If there is no massive change under way in the culture, why make a case for a massive change in the church?”

“So Emergent has no lock on the next generation. In this respect it may prove no different from the…Jesus Movement. It coexisted, often uneasily, with more cautious expressions of church, was animated by a combination of beautiful ideals and foolish ideas, and ultimately merged into an evangelical mainstream that had adapted to its presence.”